Does anybody know of a gaming background with a race of sentient (giant) spiders in?

I was cleaning the house this afternoon, and came across a mother spider guarding a dozen babies, all wrapped in a fine web. It’s the time of year that spiders come indoors to get out of the encroaching cold and wet, so that wasn’t terribly surprising, but it made me wonder whether the whole creepy-spider thing had been really tapped. Sorry, I should have said I was cleaning the house and thinking about games…

I’ve seen giant spiders as wandering monsters in D&D for decades, and there’s a character spider or two in LOTR. Then you have the odd dark elf centaur that’s half elf and half giant spider. Not a lot of actual sentient spiders though.

Is this because they haven’t got a face that you could recognise emotions on, or perhaps they’re just too creepy for them to be anything but animal (insect)? Could it be some sort of anti-spider conspiracy (you never know)? Or, is it that I’ve just missed them?

They make a great starting point for SF or fantasy aliens. I mean, just look at them!

The Burning Wheel “Monster Burner” had a series of “life paths” (character creation system) for sentient giant spiders. It was interesting because the details given sounded like a thought out, developed society for them, but I’ve never found a full write up of them.

The Arachnids from Starship Troopers, the book not the movie, come to mind. It’s a single throwaway line but Heinlien mentions that humans had diplomatic relations with the Arachnids prior to the Human/ Arachnid war.

Maybe a new faction in the mantic universe… Since most of their races are humanoid in nature it would be interesting to see a cross over variant that weren’t humanoid in nature but still advanced in their own way. Maybe more organic tech in nature with different “species” variations like a class system…very interesting idea sir.

Not sure if you check this one anymore, but the most alien creature would be the Mantis Shrimp and Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish is kind of done because it looks like a Cthulu face, but cool creature
Mantis Shrimp is just bizarre on a lot of levels